Dax: “… and, as the 34th Rule of Acquisition states: Peace is good for business.”
Quark: “That’s the 35th Rule.”
Dax: “That’s right… what’s the 34th?”
Quark: “War is good for business. It’s easy to get them confused.”

Star Trek Deep Space Nine Episode “Destiny”

Japan is the place to be peoples! Japan is in the middle of the mother of all price wars and it is SW33T! The first shots in the price war were fired in June 2001 by Softbank’s Yahoo! BB when they slashed prices in a bid for market share. Since then prices have tumbled as broadband competitors have taken hatchets to their standard charges. The price war has thrilled consumers and shaken investors — and broadband providers aren’t done yet. When the smoke clears, it is uncertain who will be left standing. The only one thing is clear: Faster, cheaper access to the Internet is a reality now in Japan.

Back in June 2001, the rash of broadband upstarts that had sprouted up since the end of 1999 were struggling against the dominant NTT who controlled pretty much all of the 34,000 broadband users (yes 34,000 … there were only 34,000 broadband users in all of Japan!! There were more then that in Regina alone). Now as I mentioned before, Softbank was the one that lit off the war in 2001 and this did this through an acquisition and a merger. They started by acquiring a new startup called Tokyo Metallic Commu-nications before the ink had dried on the company’s incorporation documents. Apparently TMC had nearly JPY4 billion in assets and they used those assests to merge with Yahoo! BB which was elbowing its way to the front of the broadband market with ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line — the domestic-use end of the xDSL spectrum).

Now back to the major leaguer, NTT. NTT had just forked out nearly JPY100 billion to build a nationwide fiber-optic network which is refered to as the future of broadband and hadn’t expected any competition, especially from a technology that the NTT technocrats had dismissed as an “intermediate technology”, ADSL. With Softbank’s Yahoo! BB offering service for JPY2280 per month, they had essenitally cut the cost of broadband in Japan in half and lit off what would become he longest lasting and most vicious price wars in the history of Japan. High-priced Japan now has the cheapest broadband services in the world.

Broadband competitors, already struggling with massive investment costs, were forced to take an ax to their standard charges. First to chop was Sony Communication Network Corp’s So-net service, followed by NTT East and NTT West, cutting rates from JPY4,050 to JPY3,800 on July 16 2001. Next came Nifty, NEC, and Tokai Broadband Communications (T-com) in August, followed by another cut by NTT’s regional units to JPY3,100, effective October 1 2001. The 240-odd cable companies that provide Net access also had to respond, and market leader Jupiter lowered its connection fees on September 1 to JPY5,800 from JPY6,500. Japan Cablenet subsequently slashed its fees by about 40 percent.

Today, Japan still ranks well behind leaders like South Korea and Canada in the ratio of broadband connections to inhabitants (Nine in every 100 South Korean households have high-speed Internet access; Canada has just over four in 100; and Japan has less than one per 100). Still, the number of ADSL subscribers in Japan shot up from 34,000 in February 2001 to 300,000 in late June 2001. The price war has sent the numbers rocketing to 2.3 million at the end of December 2001 and it currently it looks like those numbers will hit as high as 3.6 million by the end of this year. Additionally, the choices are expanding as well.

The choices are divided into a range of technologies: from ISDN, NTT’s early expensive and — at 64 Kbps — decidedly pokey experiment, to cable radio company usen’s 100-Mbps fiber-optic service, which the company rolled out in seven major cities in October following trials in Tokyo. In between, you can find up to two dozen xDSL providers offering speeds of between 1.5 and 52 Mbps (although the most common ADSL services operate at 1.5 Mbps).

So the price war for broadband continues in Japan to this day. This snippet, shot from Jiro Kokuryo’s phone, tells it all. NTT now offers 12 mbps for about JPY$2,430/month (CDN$30). And 100 mbps (fiber) for JPY5,800/month (CDN$75).

The literal translation of the title Intacto is ‘intact,’ meaning whole or undamaged, but a more apt concept is ‘integrity,’ which has the same double connotation in English that the title has in Spanish.

Cindy, Sci-Fi Movie Reviews

This Spanish triller just hit North American shores and from the reviews I have been reading, it sounds amazing. The movie deals with luck, and people with the ability to steal the luck of those around them. A brief synopsis of the movie is as follows:

In a world where luck is transferable by a simple touch and fortunes are wagered in underground games of chance, casino owner Samuel (von Sydow) is the god of chance. When Sam’s protege, Federico (Poncela), expresses a desire for independence, Sam punishes him by taking away his ability to steal the luck of others. Left without his gift, Federico embarks on a mission of vengeance, seeking out lucky individuals and testing them before returning to the casino in Tenerife for the ultimate showdown with his old master.

The concept that luck is commodity that can be stolen and bartered with is very intriguing idea. This the Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s second movie, his first was a short film in ‘96 entitled ‘Esposados’. Still, in this movie he is said to present an amazingly fresh and unique visual style that blends beautifully with the content (it doesn’t overpower it like many ’styles’ do). His style, according to one reviewer, borrows heavily from of my two favourite directions: David Lynch and M. Night Shyamalan. How cool is that?

This movie sounds like one I’d see in a heartbeat … which pretty much ensures that it will never be shown in Regina.

If everybody had an ocean, across the U.S.A, then everbody’d be surfin’ like Califoni-a …
Beach Boys, Surfin’ U.S.A.

Many know that Google is fast and accurate search engine, but many don’t know about all the innovative things that the folks at Google come up with. The Google Labs is their demo site for all these cool gizmos and gadgets. Some of them, like their new set of pointers to merchandise, evolve into full blown sites. The merchandise pointers became Froogle for example. Unfortunately for them, as I get into Christmas shopping, I need fewer choices, not “All the world’s products in one place.”

One of the new innovations from the labs that I plan on using for all eternity is the Google Viewer. This new service converts your search results into slide show format. By this, I mean it shows you each page one after another. Seeing the pages is much more powerful then the standard text listings. Plus its just really cool. Think of it like channel surfing, for the internet.

Additionally, the spartan main interface of the Google page makes it incredibly easy to overlook all Google’s ever-expanding services & tools page and the List of Features. Check them out, I’m sure you’ll be surprised.

We all get heavier as we get older because there’s a lot more information in our heads.

Vlade Divac, Basketball player

I ran across this picture on several websites recently, usually with the title ‘Dumkopf’. The english speakers, whose sites I found this picture one, obviously had no clue what this book was about. They simply saw the word ‘existenz’ and assume that this is a german book about existentialism. Amusingly, the book is about setting up a small business.

“Werden Sie Ihr eigener Chef!” Become your own boss, Dumkopf!